Harrow Tories defeated at GLA hustings again

At the Conservatives London Assembly hustings, Brent Councillor Joel Davidson defeated Harrow Councillor Ameet Jogia by 17 votes, despite Cllr Jogia was heavily promoted by the Harrow East MP Bob Blackman and his associates, primarily to block Brent candidates.The newly selected candidate for the Brent and Harrow GLA constituency is from a Conservative split group – the ‘Brent Conservative’, recognised by the Conservative party. His reported performance at the hustings was mature and much better.
Councillor Joel Davidson represents the Brondesbury Park ward along with his group leader Cllr Warren and deputy leader Cllr Carol Shaw whose sour relationships with Mr Blackman hit the national headlines. The other group of three is from Kenton, and are well supported by Harrow East Conservatives.
Under Mr Blackman’s leadership of the Conservative group at the Brent council, the number of the Tory councillors went down from 31 in 1990 to 15 in 2006 and 6 in 2010, seemingly due to the unpleasantness within the Tory ranks – a situation similar to Harrow under Cllr Hall’s leadership.
The divide amongst the six Tory councillors is so toxic now that the leader of the Brent council (Lab) had to write to the chairman of the Conservative Party to intervene.
Like the Tory candidate for Brent and Harrow constituency in 2012, who was a Barnet councillor and heavily defeated the Harrow candidates, Cllr Joel Davidson is unlikely to have a warm welcome by the Harrow Conservatives, music for the Labour candidate, the sitting assembly member Navin Shah.
Such is the lack of interest in and enthusiasm for Cllr Joel Davidson success that there is hardly any publicity of his well deserved win.